Chris Hewish is an executive, author, and podcast host with more than thirty years of experience building platforms, products, studios, and businesses at the intersection of games, technology, entertainment, and digital commerce.

His career has taken him from the physical retail and packaged-software era through mobile, free-to-play, virtual reality, digital distribution, direct-to-consumer commerce, and today's persistent global game economies. Across that evolution, Chris has worked at the intersection of creative development and business strategy, with responsibility spanning game production, studio leadership, publishing, P&L management, corporate strategy, partnerships, and global growth.

Chris began his career in the mail room at Games Workshop before moving into quality assurance at MicroProse. He later spent more than a decade at Activision, ultimately leading studios and businesses during a period of significant growth for both the company and the industry.

As games moved beyond physical distribution, Chris moved with them. At DreamWorks Animation, he helped lead the company's expansion into interactive entertainment and mobile publishing. He subsequently held executive leadership roles at Survios and Skydance, working at the frontier of virtual reality and immersive entertainment.

Today, Chris serves as President of Xsolla, a global video game commerce company supporting developers and publishers around the world. His role gives him a broad view across the global games ecosystem, working with studios, publishers, platforms, investors, technology companies, and industry leaders navigating the changing economics of interactive entertainment.

That perspective is shaped by having operated on multiple sides of the business. Chris has been a developer trying to get a game onto a retailer's shelf, a studio leader responsible for shipping products, a publisher managing portfolio economics, an executive allocating capital, and a partner helping companies build the infrastructure required to reach and monetize players globally.

Durable Advantage

Chris is the author of Durable Advantage: Five Pillars of the Modern Game Business, a strategic examination of how the economics of the video game industry are changing and what those changes mean for the companies building its future.

The book grew from a question that increasingly defined his work: What separates a successful game from a durable game business?

His answer is a framework built around five reinforcing systems: Relationships, Commerce, Intelligence, Trust, and Time.

The central argument is that great games remain essential, but the game itself is no longer the entire business. Modern games operate inside larger economic systems involving persistent player relationships, continuous commerce, behavioral intelligence, trust, and years of accumulated engagement. Companies that deliberately govern those systems gain greater resilience, optionality, and the ability to compound value over time.

The framework is not an argument against platforms. Platforms remain essential to the global games ecosystem. It is an argument for structural maturity. The strongest businesses build across multiple channels while maintaining control over the relationships, economics, and intelligence most important to their future.

The Business of Games

Chris is also the creator and host of The Business of Games, a podcast focused on the forces shaping the global video game industry.

The show goes beyond individual products and launches to explore the business behind games: how companies grow, how business models evolve, how technology changes the economics of the industry, how leaders make decisions, and where the next sources of opportunity and disruption are emerging.

Through conversations with executives, founders, investors, creators, and other industry leaders, Chris brings an operator's perspective to discussions about where the business has been, what is changing now, and what those changes mean for the people building its future.

Operator First

Across his work as an executive, author, speaker, advisor, and podcast host, Chris approaches the industry first as an operator.

His perspective was developed inside development meetings, studio P&Ls, publishing organizations, executive reviews, partner negotiations, launches, acquisitions, successes, failures, and the inevitable moments when strategic assumptions collide with operating reality.

That experience has led him to focus increasingly on the structural evolution of the game business. Games are becoming persistent economic and social ecosystems. Players are becoming participants, creators, community members, and long-term stakeholders in those worlds. Distribution remains important, but access alone is no longer enough to create durable advantage.

Chris's work centers on understanding that transition and helping the industry build for what comes next.

Because the enduring question is no longer simply whether a company can create a successful game. It is whether the business surrounding that game is designed to become stronger with every year it operates.